Ask a Bookseller: A unique murder mystery

Leading up to Halloween, Jordyn Stocks of Piragis Northwoods Company in Ely, Minn., recommended the mystery novel “The Seven and a Half Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle” by Stuart Turton. Yes, there’s a party gathered at the crumbling Blackheath Manor that results in a murder, but what’s unique about this who-done-it is its “Groundhog’s Day”—like premise. When Aiden Bishop first wakes up in the middle of the woods, he doesn’t know what he’s doing there nor who he is. As he proceeds to wake up each day in the body of a different guest at the manor, and it becomes apparent that the only way for him to break the cycle is to put all these perspectives together and solve the mystery of Evelyn Hardcastle’s death. Stocks describes the novel as part mystery, part fantasy, part crime novel with historical elements thrown in. She says that, at first, the scenario was confusing, but as the book continued and the story grew increasingly complex, she found she couldn’t put it down.